Article written by Neil Monnery

Well for my first blog on here I think I should tell you a little bit about myself and how I became a presenter at Hospital Radio.

I was a year out of a Journalism degree at university where upon I majored in Broadcast – i.e. Radio & TV. I wanted to get into Journalism but my career hadn’t taken off as yet. I was freelancing a fair bit but nothing stable. I will admit that my main reason for joining was it would be good for my CV.

Four years later and my life and career have changed totally. I’m not in the media any more and work full-time quite happily in Search Marketing. Yet I am very much still at Hospital Radio and to be blunt it is one of my highlights of the week.

I suspect many applications for Hospital Radio are from young people like myself who think that it would be great fun to ‘play at being a DJ’ and it is just a step on the career ladder. By all means doing Hospital Radio is good for any potential media related CV but as I found out – that isn’t what Hospital Radio is about. If you think that you’ll come down and host your own show straight away then I’m sorry – that isn’t how it works.

When you join Southend Hospital Radio the first person you’ll speak to is Joan. She’ll take you through what we do. All new people start on a Request show. These run all five nights of the working week. This is when you’ll go up to the wards and take requests from patients to play on that show later in the evening.

Then you’ll help present the show with all the requests. All nights have a different team of volunteers who visit different wards. No two nights are the same as their are differing styles of presenting and a whole mix of characters. It all makes for what Hospital Radio is.

If you are interested in learning how to run a radio desk then Dave will help you learn and you will build up experience of being on air. However you get far more from it then just a nice note on your CV.

You get to meet new people and make new friends. You get to do something which genuinely helps people. When you go up to the wards to take requests you might just be the only non-staff person that patient will see all day. Many of them just want a chat and didn’t even know they should pick up free radio. You might think that it is only radio but being part of the Hospital Radio team is more than that.

So four years or so on and I’m still in the same seat every Wednesday night. The cast list may have changed (except for the very short person who has sat opposite me practically every Wednesday night I’ve been there in the past four years) but the friendship and the sense of doing something good and enjoyable has never changed.

Hospital Radio – Unlike Ronseal – It does more than it says on the tin.

Neil Monnery